White House Assault Weapons Ban Drawing Opposition

Reinstating the assault weapons ban, administration officials have acknowledged, will be among the most difficult gun control proposals to pass, given opposition from gun rights groups and their allies. Photographer: Ted Soqui/Corbis

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will unveil
tomorrow a package of proposals to cut gun violence, including a
ban on sales of assault weapons that faces opposition in
Congress even as a majority of the public backs it.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will be joined by
children who wrote the president expressing their concerns
following the mass shooting last month at a Connecticut school
for the announcement, scheduled for 11:45 a.m. at the White
House, Jay Carney, the president’s chief spokesman, said.

Obama “will broadly address the steps forward he believes
we need to take as a nation” to curb gun violence, and a
“significant” portion of the proposals will require action by
Congress, Carney said. “The president’s committed to this.”

While Carney refused to preview what the president will
introduce, other administration officials said Obama will ask
for universal background checks for firearms buyers and a ban on
high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Initiatives to strengthen mental-health checks, tighten
school safety, address cultural influences such as violent
movies and video games, and improve the government’s ability to
collect information about gun violence, are also on the list,
according to the officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss
details before the event.

The plan will include 19 separate steps Obama could take
through executive action, prompting complaints from Republicans
that he will abuse the authority of his office to monitor gun
owners and restrict their rights.

Obama’s Caution

Obama, speaking yesterday on the one-month anniversary of
the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that
killed 20 children and six school employees, said some of his
proposals may not become law.

“We’re going to have to come up with answers that set
politics aside -- and that’s what I expect Congress to do,”
Obama told reporters at a White House news conference. “Will
all of them get through this Congress? I don’t know. But what’s
uppermost in my mind is making sure I’m honest with the American
people and Congress about what I think will work.”

Congressional Democrats shared the president’s skepticism.
They said that passing gun legislation will be difficult with
lawmakers mired in a debate over government spending, deficit
reduction and raising the country’s $16.4 trillion debt limit.

‘Competing Initiatives’

“How far the shift in attitudes will go on gun-violence
prevention remains to be seen, in part because there are other
competing initiatives that the president is pursuing,” said
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who’s
dedicated much of his time to working on the gun issue since the
Dec. 14 shootings.

Reinstating an expired 1994 assault-weapons ban,
administration officials have indicated, will be among the most
difficult to pass, given opposition from gun-rights groups and
their allies on Capitol Hill.

“The likelihood is that they are not going to be able to
get an assault-weapons ban through this Congress,” David Keene,
the president of the National Rifle Association, said Jan. 13 in
an interview with CNN.

While allies expressed support for the White House plans,
some Democrats urged the president to take a narrower approach,
concentrating on expanding background checks and limiting high-capacity ammunition magazines, proposals that even many gun
owners back.

Ammunition Magazines

Support for banning high-capacity magazines has reached a
new high, at 65 percent, according to an ABC News/Washington
Post poll released yesterday. The survey has tracked the issue
since early 2011.

Requiring background checks on firearms buyers at gun shows
has the support of 88 percent of Americans, while 58 percent
want to ban the sale of assault weapons, the poll found. Fifty-five percent back the NRA’s call for armed guards in schools.

“We really need to prioritize what we do,” said
Representative Mike Thompson, a California Democrat who is
chairman of a House panel on gun violence.

The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School pushed the
issue of gun violence to the top of the president’s agenda in
his second term.

Obama is reviewing proposals gathered by Biden, who spent
decades in the Senate working on gun restrictions and was
appointed by the president to lead an administration-wide effort
to craft a policy response.

Giffords’ Shooting

Yesterday, Biden met with the Gun Violence Prevention Task
Force, a group of House Democrats, including Thompson and
Representative Ron Barber of Arizona, who was wounded in the
same 2011 shooting that injured his-then boss, former
Representative Gabrielle Giffords, also an Arizona Democrat.

Thompson, along with a number of Democrats including
California Senator Barbara Boxer, encouraged the administration
to include measures on school safety, such as funding more
police officers in public schools and installing classroom doors
that lock from the inside.

The Biden meeting was one of several the vice president
hosted with stakeholders in the gun debate, including victims
groups as well as the NRA.

Once Obama releases his recommendations, the focus will
shift to Congress, where a number of members are already
planning to offer legislation. Among them is Senator Dianne
Feinstein, a California Democrat who has said she will introduce
a bill expanding the classification of assault weapons and
prohibiting their sale and importation.

President’s Powers

Biden has told lawmakers the administration intends to use
White House powers to act on new policies, saying officials have
gathered a list of measures that can be taken without
congressional approval.

Those options have invited opposition from Republicans, who
maintain the president is overreaching the power of his office.
Representative Steve Stockman, a Texas Republican, said he’d
file articles of impeachment if the president uses executive
actions to restrict gun rights.

“The president’s actions are not just an attack on the
Constitution and a violation of his sworn oath of office - they
are a direct attack on Americans that place all of us in
danger,” he said in a statement.

Much of the challenge in the Congress stems from the wide
reach of the NRA, both in terms of campaign contributions and
its grassroots network.

NRA Support

Forty-seven percent of the members of the House received
funding from the NRA’s political action committee in their most
recent race, according to an analysis by the Sunlight
Foundation, a Washington-based group that tracks political
giving.

One of the NRA’s top recipients, with $64,000 in
contributions over his career, is Pete Sessions, a Texas
Republican. Sessions will serve as chairman of the House Rules
Committee, giving him authority over which legislation gets to
the House floor for a final vote.

While most of the NRA’s contributions are small -- the
average PAC contribution in the House was $2,390 -- it keeps a
scorecard that rates lawmakers’ votes. Its 4 million members
serve as a powerful grassroots network that targets lawmakers
who disagree with its positions.

Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor who advised then-President
Bill Clinton during passage of the 1993 Crime Bill and 1994
assault weapons ban, urged Obama to limit the congressional
debate and seek to achieve as many measures as possible through
executive actions.

“Whatever you can do administratively, clear the table,
man,” said Emanuel, during an address in Washington yesterday.
“Don’t allow a side issue to derail these things.”